the figures

The kit comes in Dragons familiar top-opening boxes, unlike most of their figures sets, but still with excellent box art, this time by Ron Volstad. Inside the box there are 9 sprues of their light grey styrene, which hold over 300 parts! I needed to stop and ponder this for a moment...4 figures, over 300 parts....that's over 75 parts per figure...in 1/35th scale. The detail pictures on the right show you exactly what's in the box.

The sharpness alone, that Dragon manage to achieve on these subjects is fantastic. Absolutely no flash whatsoever. They deserve to be closely examined under a magnifying lens.....you still won't find any flash, but you will be able to appreciate the detail that Dragon have included on these figures. I'm still not sure about the seperate faces, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Dragon do when they come to mould a 2nd Generation figure without a chin strap.....should be interesting.

All four figures represent early war Fallschirmjagers from around 1940 wearing the M1938 jump smock. I like these early war sets, as they do present us with some wonderful diorama potential.
The first figure is kneeling on one knee, holding a stick grenade in his left hand and a pistol in his right, He's also wearing binoculars and has a map case slung in front. The second figure is slightly stooped holding a MG34 with tripod, th MG hanging in a strap sling, which Dragon supply as photo etch, looking as if about to set it down. The third figure is standing up, holding the ammo case for the MG34in his right hand, and a rifle in his left hand that will require the addition of a sling, again, this is provided for you as photoetch. The fourth figure is again, kneeling down, this time with a stick grenade in his right hand and an MP40 in his left, with another photo etch strap. Also supplied on the photo etch fret are all insignia and buckles, all with very fine detail indeed.

I have part assembled one of the figures, and there doesn't seem to be any fit problems, particularly with regard to getting the figure to hold their weapons realistically. I think this is because the hands are seperate, which mean much more flexability when 'adjusting' the fit. There doesn't seem to be any area on these figures that Draon have overlooked....even the boots have full lace and sole detail. As you can see from the pictures, also included in the kit are two drop canisters, with internal detail moulded in. There are a couple of knock-out pin marks on the inside, which is unusual, but these look easily remedied. With the addition of cord and a heap of silk, I'm sure we'll see these crop up in many a diorama soon!

in conclusion

Another early war set from Dragon, this set if anything, improve on the first two 2nd Generation sets, and represents state of the art styrene moulding at an incredible price. I can't wait to see what Dragon are going to do next!



My Thanks to Dragon for the review sample